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Speakers CornerAir your opinion on current world affairs. A forum for civil discussion and exchange of ideas. No flaming or abuse allowed. All posts should include your opinion on the subject, not your opinion of the member posting.

"Paul Ryan has come to Kenosha to deliver bad news. It’s May 3, 2012, and the United States faces an imminent debt crisis. The federal government is spending too much. Entitlements are out of control. Social Security is going insolvent. Medicare is sucking up an ever-increasing chunk of our tax dollars. There are too many retirees and too few workers to support them. And both political parties are responsible for the unholy mess."

essentially he flipped burgers in high school and worked in his family business for a couple of months.

Quote:

Ryan, 42, has spent the bulk of his career in the capital. The House Budget Committee chairman has been in Congress since he was 28 and before that did stints as a congressional staffer and at the late Jack Kemp’s think tank, Empower America. And the very small but influential constituency that’s now promoting Ryan hails from the same orbit of GOP thinkers and politicians as Ryan.

More than one Republican wise guy noticed the irony of The Wall Street Journal’s Thursday editorial criticizing “Beltway bedwetters” for fretting about the danger of elevating Ryan’s Medicare reform proposal given that the core of the congressman’s fan club is made up of conservative elites in the capital and his colleagues in the Capitol.

Ryan’s time working in the business world is limited to the brief period he spent at his family’s construction business in Janesville, Wis. That was only a matter of months, though. According to published reports, he returned to Wisconsin after the 1992 loss of his then-boss, Sen. Bob Kasten, but was back in Washington the next year working for Empower America. He returned to the family firm once more as a management consultant in 1997 but spent just a few months there before launching his winning congressional bid the next year.

While he wasn’t exactly a job creator, Ryan has hustled to earn a living over the years, a skill many pols never have to develop.

In high school, the Badger State native worked on a series of entry-level jobs, including a stint on a grill at a local McDonald’s. During college, he worked as an Oscar Mayer salesman and got a turn on the Wienermobile. And in his first years in Washington, he paid the rent thanks to a gig at Tortilla Coast, a Capitol Hill watering hole, and a job whipping people into shape at Washington Sport and Health Club.

The Majority Leader said the bill scores as reducing deficit by $131 billion over the next 10 years.

First a little bit about CBO: I work with them every single day; very good people; great professionals. They do their jobs well. But their job is to score what is placed in front of them. And what has been placed in front of them is a bill that is fill of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors.

Now what do I mean when I say that?

First off, the bill has ten years of tax increases and ten years of Medicare cuts to pay for six years of spending. The true ten year cost when subsidies kick-in? $2.3 trillion.

The bill is full of gimmicks that more than erase the false claim of deficit reduction:

- $52 billion of savings is claimed by counting increased Social Security payroll revenues. These dollars are already claimed for future Social Security beneficiaries, and claiming to offset the cost of this bill either means were double-counting or were not going to pay Social Security benefits.

- $72 billion in savings is claimed from the CLASS Act long-term care insurance. These so-called savings are not offsets, but rather premiums collected to pay for future benefits. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad has called these savings, A ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

Additionally, the nearly half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts cannot be counted twice. Medicare is in dire need of reform in order to make certain that we can ensure health security for future seniors.

Using Medicare as a piggy bank, it raids a half trillion dollars from retirees health coverage to fund the creation of another open-ended health care entitlement.

The Presidents chief Medicare actuary says up to 20% of Medicare providers may go bankrupt or stop taking Medicare beneficiaries as a result. Millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage will lose the coverage they now enjoy.

Objections to the policy aside, you cannot use these savings twice to both extend the life of Medicare and to pay for other spending. The half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts are either to extend the programs solvency or to reduce the cost of this deficit but not both as its authors claim.

When you strip away the double-counting of Medicare cuts, the so-called savings from Social Security payroll taxes and the CLASS Act, the deficit increases by $460 billion over first ten years and $1.4 trillion over second ten years.

Finally, one of the most expensive and most cynical of the gimmicks applies to Medicare physician payments, the so-called Doc Fix.

By your own estimate, the Doc Fix adds an additional $371 billion to the cost of health care reform. With the price tag beyond what most Americans could handle, the Majority decided to simply remove this costly provision and deal with it in a stand-alone bill.

Ignoring this additional cost does not remove it from the backs of taxpayers. Hiding spending doesnt reduce spending."

It's lovely to see how Paul Ryan eviscerates Obama & Obamacare, eh? Obama essentially had his ass handed to him...again.

Mitt Romney is announcing his VP choice today in Virginia. Most commentators expect it will be uber-conservative GOP House members Paul Ryan, whose cute but nutty.

Ryan is most famous recently for his draconian bugget proposal that even fellow Republicans eventually walked away from.

Here is a quick bio on Ryan - what's interesting to me is that he only has a bachelor's degree. While that's not, in the modern era it's not at all uncommon for presidential candidates to have gone to graduate school as well (though, as the GOP now has disdain for a college education, per Rick Santorum, this likely won't hurt Ryan with the Republican minions).

This also means that Ryan's supposed "expertise" in economics and budgeting comes from undergrad courses in economics. Milton Friedman he ain't.

The other problem with Ryan's bio is that he has next to zero experience outside of Washington politics. His only real work experience outside of government (or "consulting" to the family business), is working as a waiter at Tortilla Coast, as a trainer at a gym, and driving the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

Ryan's health is also a serious concern. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
“‘(My father) died of a heartattack at 55, my grandfather died of a heart attack at 57, my great-grandfather died of heart attack at 59, so I’m into the health thing,’ says Ryan." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,4/26/09)

1. The Ryan budget raises taxes on the middle class - married couples earning between $100,000 to $200,000 a year would see their tax burden raise about $2700 because of eliminated deductions, while households earning more than $1 million a year would save $300,000.

2. Ryan cuts Medicaid by 45%, leaving 19m people without health care.

3. Ryan's budget would add $3.1 trillion to the deficit, more than would be added under current law.

4. Would end Medicare as we know it, moving the eligibility age up to 67 from 65, and putting caps on spending. If senior don't like it, he'd give them a voucher to go get violated with a private insurance plan that would likely cost them their entire life savings.

5. Wants to privatize Social Security.

6. Supports allowing states to jail women who get, and doctors who perform, abortions.

7. Would outlaw abortion, even for rape and incest (Associated Press, 9/26/98).

8. Ryan voted for the auto bailout, then criticized it (Janesville Gazette, 5/3/10).

9. Ryan voted for the Bush tax cuts, but felt they were too small (States News Service, 5/4/01).

First Read notes some other problems with Ryan:

There are also holes in Ryan’s budget-hawk armor: He voted for some of the biggest drivers of the deficit/debt -- the Bush tax cuts, the Iraq war, and the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, all of which weren’t paid for. Moreover, Ryan voted against the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles recommendations.

Has never held statewide office and has no foreign-policy experience. Both could be liabilities.

And while Romney has criticized Obama for not having private-sector experience, the same is largely true of Ryan: As the New Yorker has written, Ryan briefly worked for his family’s business as a “marketing consultant,” but most of his adult life has been spent as a congressman, congressional aide, or speechwriter/analyst at Jack Kemp’s Empower America think tank.

For your reading pleasure, here's a 290 page opposition research document with much more on Paul Ryan.

Fun fact: Ryan's childhood nickname is "P.D.," which in French means "f*g."

Romney, who has been extremely vague about what he would do if elected, will now own Paul Ryan’s ideas, which include privatizing Social Security, turning Medicare into a voucher program, bloc-granting and drastically cutting Medicaid, and reducing discretionary spending to levels that would affect every popular government program. This Ryan agenda will now fill the vacuum created by Romney’s unwillingness to lay out the specifics of his own plan. Even before this (apparent) announcement, Democrats were planning on tying Romney to Ryan’s policy platform. Now Romney has done it for them.

from cnn.
Prior to Saturday's announcement, many Republicans who spoke to CNN -- all of them granted anonymity to speak freely without angering Romney officials in Boston -- wondered why Romney would announce the pick on a weekend when millions of potential voters are likely to be distracted by the Olympics, PGA golf, late-season baseball and the box office release of the latest Bourne thriller.

Ryan is a fiscal hawk, shame he wasn't VP under dubya. Too late for that now though- and he will be savaged during electioneering because of his plans to decimate Medicare & Medicaid. Seniors are a very important electoral constituency for the GOP, and the attacks will thus hurt. Hey old fogey- Obamacare doesn't look so bad now, does it?

There was no easy or obvious pick for Romney- and Ryan is as good as anybody. At least the GOP has sealed their defeat with some credibility.

Corporate Tax Rate: the plan cuts the tax rate for Incorporated Americanss from 35% to 25%. Will this make Grover Norquist cry, given that most large Incorporated Americans currently either pay no taxes, or get money back from the government? No, it will not make him cry, because it only pretend closes a lot of tax loopholes (otherwise known as “the corporate tax code”) and thus probably does not actually change the tax rate for Incorporated Americans in anything other than theory.

Taxes for Non-Incorporated Americans: the plan creates two tax brackets: 25% and 10%. You enter the 25% tax bracket if you’re an individual making $50,000 or a joint filer or family with an income of $100,000, which means that an individual making $50,000 per year will pay the same tax rate as multi-millionaire Mitt Romney (in the event that multi-millionaire Mitt Romney deigns to pay taxes, that is, which as we know, he may or may not.) This, of course, raises taxes on the middle class (a.k.a, “one medical emergency away from being Poors”) but taxes only count when they are levied on Job Creators, so we can breathe a sigh of relief about that.

Health Insurance: Those who purchase health insurance get a non-taxable sum of $2300 in the beginning of the year, unless they are on military health plans or Medicare and joint filers get $5700 for the entire family.

Medicaid: Medicaid benefits would be paid via debit cards from a bank, thus allowing the banks to charge fees to Poors even though they may not even have bank accounts. Medicaid would also be given as block grants (as opposed to matching-grants) so about 14 million would lose their Medicaid coverage on the plan. These 14 million are probably sick, disabled, or Poors, which has raised the ire of a bunch of uppity nuns who seem to have forgotten that their mission is less about helping Poors than lecturing about sluts and buttseks. Paul Ryan has that effect on people, we guess.

Non-military spending: anything that is not “military spending,” such as foreign aid, assistance to veterans and federal funding for schools and roads would be cut by over two-thirds.

Health Insurance: the Ryan Plan sets up “health insurance exchanges,” which allow insurance companies to reach across state lines and screw you, instead of being limited to screwing residents within state lines.

Medicare: if you become eligible for Medicare prior to January 1, 2021, you can still “retire” at 65; otherwise you have to “retire” at 67. By “retire” we mean “continuing to work until you’re 80 and then dying.” Medicare will consist of “standard payments” for health care coverage. These “standard payments” are the average amount that Medicare spends per beneficiary, unless you make $80,000 per year or more, in which case you get half that. Also, it will be “geographically adjusted” at first but then they’ll phase that out at some point. Unlike the 2010 version of the plan, the 2012 plan allows Olds to stay on Medicare if they REALLY REALLY want to, but they will have to purchase it using these standard payments, and it will cost them more than if traditional Medicare was left in place.

Social Security: are you feeling left out, Social Security beneficiaries? Don’t, because you’re in here too! In the Ryan Plan, Social Security becomes an opt-out system wherein you’re given a personal account to which you contribute annually, administered by a Social Security Savings Account Board, and then when you retire, you get payments from your account in the form of an annuity.

So in summary, the Ryan Plan will privatize anything and everything, raise your taxes if you make over $50,000 per year, cut them if you make over $200,000 per year, and end Medicare and Medicaid as we know it.

Paul Ryan’s plans to restructure Medicare poses challenges in Florida as does his one-time opposition to the Cuban embargo, a now-reversed position that gives some Cuban Americans pause.

Republicans are rejoicing at Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate.

But so are Democrats.

Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman, is the architect of the Ryan budget plan that makes big changes to Medicare and Medicaid and could allow for some privatization of Social Security. And that’s widely seen as a politically risky stance in Florida, a must-win state for Republicans.

Ryan might have another Florida problem: He once opposed the U.S. embargo on Cuba, a now-reversed stance that concerns some in Miami-Dade’s exile community, which is overwhelmingly Republican and had hoped that one of their own, Sen. Marco Rubio, would have been picked as Romney’s running mate. The county’s elderly Cuban population also relies heavily on government assistance, particularly Medicare.

Polls indicate that voters over 50 years old — who make up more than half the Florida electorate — are wary of changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which together pump about $96 billion yearly into the hands of the elderly, the infirm and the hospitals, doctors and other providers who give them care.

By picking Ryan, Romney shows he’s ready to fight for conservative changes to the liberal-legacy programs.

“We won’t duck the tough issues... we will lead,” Ryan said in his official acceptance speech in Norfolk, Va. “We won’t blame others... we will take responsibility. We won’t replace our founding principles...we will reapply them.”

Democrats are ready, too, for a battle of ideas.

“Paul Ryan wants to privatize Social Security. Looking forward to welcoming Mitt and his pick to Florida,” U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, a Boca Raton Democrat, tweeted. “There’s nothing brave about cutting the programs that America’s seniors rely on for their health and financial security.”

At the heart of the controversy is Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare in the future into a “premium support” system that would directly subsidize insurance companies on behalf of seniors. It would essentially put more caps on future Medicare expenditures.

Democrats prefer to use the “V” word to describe the plan: Voucher. And they point to independent studies showing that the voucher, a predetermined amount of money that escalates at a predetermined rate over time, won’t keep pace with the inflation of medical costs.

Bottom line: Seniors would have to pay much more out of pocket in the future. Services could be cut.

Ryan and the plan’s defenders point out that nothing’s free. Someone’s always paying something for Medicare or any other government program. He said he wants to change the plan for those younger than 55 to save the program, which is on an unsustainable path.

A Florida poll last week showed Baby Boomers, worried about their future, plan to rely more on Social Security and Medicare than they had initially anticipated. So talk of cuts can spook these voters.

Similar to voters overall in other polls, Baby Boomers in Florida deadlocked 45-46 percent over whether they’d vote for President Obama or Romney, according to an American Association of Retired Person’s survey of 500 older voters last week. Retirees favored Romney over Obama by 48-43 percent, a lead within the poll’s 4.4 percent error margin.

snip to page 3

But even Republicans might not be on board with wholesale Medicare changes, according to an AARP poll last year of Florida Republican voters. It showed that modest changes to benefits for future retirees are opposed by 66 percent of voters. Only 27 percent favor future reductions, which could include raising the retirement age, though the poll didn’t specifically address that issue.

Asked if they favored or opposed reducing Medicare benefits to help reduce the deficit, only 22 percent liked the idea. About 70 percent didn’t.

considering what ryan wants to do to medicare.....does the GOP have any chance of winning florida?

It's virtually impossible for Romney to win Florida now. Florida's elderly (a huge demographic) will be lined up in droves on election day to protect their Medicare and Social Security from the likes of Paul Ryan. Romney's choice for VP is a terrible tactical mistake that gives Obama a huge advantage. If the election is close, there will probably be only 8 swing states - New Hampshire, N. Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. If Obama wins Florida, he can lose all 7 of the other swing states and still win the election. Here's the type of TV ad that the Dems can expect to run to pound away at Ryan's philosophical opposition to programs for the elderly. The Dems are finally getting as nasty as Karl Rove and the Republicans, so we may see ads like this attacking Ryan:

Whether Ryan is a Congressman or becomes VP, it is irrelevant of what his stance on Medicare is. The Question is: are the old, stupid people wise and informed enough to figure that out.

It means plenty.
There is a difference between the Constitutional role of the VP and the political
role between the White House and Congress, as well as those who are given entre to influence in the shaping of policy and law. Those who don't appreciate that difference are whisteling past the graveyard.

Quote:

For two years, Tea Party lawmakers in the House have been the stubborn barbarians at the gate, strong-arming their often reluctant Republican colleagues by refusing to compromise on spending, taxes, debt or social policy.
But Paul Ryan’s ascendency to the No. 2 spot on the Republican ticket is a signal event for a movement that counts him as one of their own. If Mitt Romney wins in November, a Tea Party favorite will be a heartbeat from the Oval Office.
More than that, Mr. Ryan is now unquestionably the face of the Tea Party caucus in Washington, and his success is certain to embolden House lawmakers whose proudly unyielding approach to governance has contributed to legislative gridlock.
Once considered a fringe of the conservative coalition, Tea Party lawmakers are now indisputably at the core of the modern Republican Party.

It's virtually impossible for Romney to legally win Florida now. Why do I feel the need to qualify my earlier post? Because voter suppression by the Florida Republicans might engineer an official result different than the intent of the Florida voters. I certainly hope it's not Bush-Gore all over again but ...